Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - July 26, 1995, Winnipeg, Manitoba A6 Winnipeg free press july editorials Brian Cole 6977044 inner City answers Roberta Nep Inak knows what the problems she even has some potential she just needs some help in trying to implement lives in the North end with her Hus band not far from the spot where 13yearold Joseph Spence was fatally shot Over the the Nepi Naks knew that youth crime and Street gangs had become a real problem in their neighbourhood before last weekends is Nepi Naks brother got caught up in a youth gang and is now serving time in the Nepi Naks know that some growing up in without any real Hope of a Are attracted to the things gangs offer a feeling of a feeling of having control Over ones self and Power Over they also know that reaching these kids will take More than hiring More police officers or making sure convicted Young offenders cant watch television while they Are they As is Nep Inak writes on Page a7 that the Only Way to Deal with Winnipeg worsening Street gang problem is from the they know that the Community must work together to find its own for individuals to take More responsibility for what goes on in their one of their ideas is to create a Handson native Cul Tural Centre that would offer native youths a Chance to get in touch with their to touch base with role mod Els and Community elders who know the difference Between right and wrong and have the Power to make an its an idea that deserves the Nepi Naks Arent alone in their ideas about How to build a better there Are agencies the Andrews Street family Centre and Bear clan patrol to name two that Are trying to make a but the Nepi Naks and the others cant do it they need help from people such As Premier Gary Filmon and mayor Susan for too Long now the Issue of youth gangs has been played for the tories have used the Issue primarily to Shore up their support on the right by talking Tough about punishing Young offenders and making jails less hospitable the Premier must show leadership in this Issue by making a serious political and financial commitment to dealing with the causes of youth not just the symptoms of four years the tories Cut funding to aboriginal Friendship centres and chipped away at other programs As part of an Overall plan to Cut the perhaps it is time to review some of those he could Start by providing funding to agencies that have a Chance of reaching out to inner City the Money could initially come from the Winnipeg development the Premier could also appoint someone in his government to go out and talk to intercity residents about their ideas for making their communities perhaps that person could Start by calling on Roberta and Kevin making a valid Point the epithets Are flying thick and fast in where some of the provinces wealthiest native communities Are resisting readmission of women they kicked out years Justice Francis Muldoon of the Federal court of Canada rejected the View of the Oil Rich saw Ridge together with the Ermineskin and Tsuu Tina they wanted him to strike Down the 1985 Indian act amendment that reopened Indian status to women who had been kicked off the reserves for marrying Nonini Indian men never lost status for since people have been reinstated at bringing the band list to a further 250 people claim a right to membership in the which controls an Esti mated million in As a Barrier to the band made applicants Complete a 43page questionnaire on their religion and judge Muldoon thought the highly fascist and racist test of Pedigree put its practitioners on the path of the nazi if it is fascist and racist to pass an estate to blood rela Tives and withhold it from then plenty of canadians Are on that same but judge Muldoon overwrought invective has obscured his valid Point that a band Community cannot unreasonably refuse band membership to people who show a Good claim and a real the bands said the Federal court judgment was anti Indian and resolved to take the matter to a higher but that exaggerated obscures More than it since the judge had to weigh the claims of Dif Ferent groups of native the decision is As much pro Indian As it is band membership affects Public rights As Well As Pri vate the band cannot expect the support of the courts if it tries to discriminate among claimants on the basis of Winnipeg free press Winnipeg free press est 1b72 Winnipeg Tribune eat 1890 Rudy Duncan Mcmonagle executive editor Brian Cole editorial Page editor directors Calvin James circulation Verne Kalichuk human resources Stephan Majorki operations Perry Glenn 1995 Winnipeg free a division of newspapers division of Thomson newspapers company limited published seven Days a week at 1355 Mountain Manitoba r2x pm 6977000 a member of the Manitoba press Council cutbacks produce gangs Tauta the hardworking souls Over at tourism win the newspaper headlines must have Felt like a rail Way Spike driven through their cheery gang crime growing menace in Winnipeg Sang the Story on the front Page of the Globe and mail Docu menting the shooting death of Joseph a 13yearold inner City first it was the Mosquito infestation and the torrential Rains and floods that defined our poor City in the eyes of the rest of the now Winnipeg has a gang problem that defies our modest population but the Root causes have less to do with crime itself than they do with Pover As a reporter for the free press at the Manitoba legislature in was one of the legion of reporters who wrote at length about the Cut backs in social services that eventually left hundreds of inner City children it got to the Point where child and family service agencies were forced to concede that children Over 13 who left Home to escape family problems were essentially left to their own devices because there was no Money for a Foster it was during this period that Manitoba became known coast to coast As the child poverty capital of Cana National reporter a and As a responsible i dutifully reported the statistic year after governments collectively could think of Little to do except provide the most Basic of ser in now As a City Hall one of my first stories dealt with the failure of the City and province to provide funding for a main Street sniff treatment the decision to deny funding came on the Day after a teenage solvent abuser was found Frozen to death in an throughout the there Are quotes from social workers who warned that if governments continued on this path of avoiding Preven Tive measures in favor of severe they would be unleashing a new generation of frustrated and desperate teenagers on society and that the collective Cost of fixing these problems would be far greater than the Cost of avoiding them the advocates our undoing As a spawning crime and health problems of a magnitude never before and now we have Joseph who was fatally shot in the Back in a gang his demise can now be added to the car and hundreds of threats and other acts of violence that have become such a part of our Community As poverty takes hold and becomes institutionalized in the form of Street regardless of the Progress the fed provincial and City govern ments have made in holding the line on income taxes or reducing their poverty has continued to grow in the Post recession Era As wildly As the weeds that creep Over main streets vacant the recession has come and gone As have the promises that cuts to critical social services would be restored once the fiscal House was in t is perhaps Saddest of All that what has happened in Manitoba has not become a lesson for the rest of the while poverty continues to tighten its grip in the Keystone Ontario Premier Mike Harris has launched his government on one of the most profound wars on social programs Ever seen in in one fell Harris has Cut 20 per cent from social while at the same time slashing funding for Day subsidized housing and in his desperate Gamble i to reduce government has already left the residents of his province one can Only won Der if he is saving Money in some sock to pay for the Lon term costs of these one of the biggest hurdles stand ing in the Way of a greater under standing of the Lon term costs of poverty is that those of us who Are not poor Are rarely in facet face Contact with the frontline in our own Safe havens we Only have to contend with an Early symptom of property where the Haven ots venture Forth to take from the despite the car thefts and governments still cannot make the connection Between policies that promote poverty and the Lon term costs of Pover when All is said and society and its leaders Are just removed enough from the ravages of poverty to ensure Little is done to Stem its Ris ing part of this indifference can be attributed to the gangs of poor youth that roam Winnipeg mean whose biggest mistake is that they continue to kill other poor peo and if those who hold the purse strings for society have proven any it is that they can live with Dan Lett is Ottawa correspondent for the free his column appears on serb aggressors ignore bluster by Holger Jensen Howard news service lets its been nearly a week now since the Western allies agreed on a More robust response to serbian aggression in so what has actually happened the rhetoric is certainly More but the serbs can be for Given for not feeling too intimidate Treyve heard it All and the worlds major Powers who in the words of an american Pilot based at bomb the serbs Back into the Stone age if they had the political will to do it Are still in the meeting on thursday last France and the United states agreed on massive air strikes to deter ser Bian attacks on a designated Safe havens this with Srebrenick hav ing Zepa on the verge of being overrun and Bihac and Gorade com ing under on Friday the nato allies warned of a substantial and decisive response that might include air Power if the serbs made any Effort to take the other Safe havens were not so the serbs intensified their attacks on Zepa while trying to Cut the Bihac enclave in on serbian hellfire killed two French peacekeepers in the serbs also intensified their attacks on other Safe on the allies formally informed serbian Ratko Mladic his troops would suffer air strikes at unprecedented Levels if they tried to take the White House added that attacks on other Safe havens cannot be on the first combat units of a new franc British rapid reaction Force deployed around Sarajevo with tanks and a in spokesman said they would be used Only to protect in Relief con Voys and peacekeeping not the civilian residents of the bosnian capital who endure daily sniping and rocket the serbs continued to bombard Zepa and captured a chunk of Bihac in what one in spokesman called an extraordinary human rights investigator Tadeusz Mazowiecki also accused them of committing Barbaric acts against muslims in including summary executions and no air strikes were although defense Secretary William Perry says nato jets Are ready to take off at a moments no one seems ready to give them that nato defence meeting in spent most of monday arguing about the dual key control under which both the West Ern Alliance and the United nations have to approve air Mon Days meeting ended i conclusively and will resume Yasushi the chief in envoy in former insists the dual key is still firmly in the United states says it is too cum the French and with the most troops on the insist on veto and the rus sians oppose air strikes nato threats Only worked once before in the 41month War when the serbs stopped shelling Sarajevo and surrendered their heavy weapons in february but they took them Back As soon As they realized the in want prepared to defend its weapons collection and they began shelling Sarajevo again As soon As it became Clear that Akashi unleash natos air even decisive air strikes will not bring peace to the Pentagon and european defence establish ments agree that it would take a Mas Sive insertion of ground troops or More to separate the combatants by none of the nato Powers wants to get sucked into a Balkan ground the serbs know so when president Clinton talks air All they hear Are his repeated Assur ances that he wont Send in the Holger Jensen is International Edi Tor of the Rocky Mountain news in a void be a pakistani in Soldier distributes eggs to refugees from Srebrenick at Tula Airport ;